KP Hospitals Shine in Specialty Care Ranking

Kaiser Permanente hospitals in San Francisco and Sacramento are among the country’s top 50 hospitals for certain types of specialty care, according to the U.S. News & World Report annual report on hospitals that excel in treating the most complex cases.

San Francisco Medical Center ranked 45th in the country for cardiology and heart surgery. It was ranked 12th in California and third in San Francisco for one or more specialties. It received “high performing” rankings for cancer, gastroenterology, gastrointestinal surgery, geriatrics, gynecology, neurology, neurosurgery, pulmonology, and urology.

Sacramento Medical Center was ranked 50th in the country for gynecology. It was ranked 17th in the state and second in the Sacramento metro area.

KP San Francisco

Seven other Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California — Antioch, Manteca, Oakland, Santa Clara, Santa Rosa, South Sacramento, and South San Francisco — were ranked best overall in the state or their respective regions for one or more specialties. Nationally, 20 Kaiser Permanente hospitals were rated high performing in one or more specialties.

“Kaiser Permanente’s outstanding performance in the U.S. News & World Report ratings reflects our continued commitment to quality and achieving the best health outcomes for our members,” said Gregory A. Adams, Northern California’s group president and regional president of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Health Plan, Inc. “The focus of our tens of thousands of dedicated physicians, nurses, clinicians, and care teams on proactive prevention of illness, early detection of disease, and better treatment of chronic conditions is critical in our ability to save lives and help keep our members healthy.”

For the 26th year, U.S. News evaluated hospitals in 16 adult specialties and ranked the top 50 in most of the specialties. Less than 3 percent of the nearly 5,000 hospitals that were analyzed for Best Hospitals 2015-16 were nationally ranked in even one specialty. The report also analyzed and rated facilities in most states and in major metropolitan regions (all U.S. regions with at least 500,000 in population).

In rankings by state and metro area, U.S. News recognized hospitals that perform nearly at the level of their nationally ranked peers in one or more specialties, as well as hospitals that excel in multiple common procedures and conditions. The hospitals were evaluated and ranked overall for specialties such as cancer, gastroenterology, gastrointestinal surgery, geriatrics, gynecology, neurology, neurosurgery, orthopedics, pulmonology, and urology.

U.S. News publishes Best Hospitals to help guide patients who need a high level of care because they face a particularly difficult surgery, a challenging condition, or extra risk because of age or multiple health problems. Objective measures such as patient survival and safety data, adequacy of nurse staffing, and other data largely determined the rankings in most specialties.

“Our 8,000 physicians in Northern California are nationally recognized for the excellence of the care they provide. Achieving outstanding outcomes for patients who require hospitalization is a major reason why we have been able to lower the mortality rate from cardiovascular disease 30 percent below patients who get their care outside of Kaiser Permanente,” said Robert Pearl, MD, executive director and CEO of The Permanente Medical Group. “These superior ratings would not be possible without cutting edge technology, a comprehensive electronic medical record, individual excellence, and remarkable teamwork.”

“A Best Hospital has demonstrated expertise in treating the most challenging patients,” said Ben Harder, chief of health analysis at U.S. News. “A hospital that emerged from our analysis as one of the best has much to be proud of.”

The specialty rankings and data were produced for U.S. News by RTI International, a leading research organization based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. U.S. News used the same data, as well as the new Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings, first published in May, to produce the state and metro rankings.

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